“Brown University Library has become the newest member of HathiTrust (www.hathitrust.org), a partnership of major academic and research libraries collaborating in an extraordinary digital library initiative to preserve and provide access to the published record in digital form. Brown University Library will join HathiTrust as a sustaining partner.” (via Brown University Library News)

“Coalitions of librarians and colleges and universities filed friend of the court briefs Tuesday supporting the HathiTrust in a lawsuit in which authors’ groups charge that the digital repository is violating their copyright in making some of their works freely available.” (via Inside Higher Ed)

“By the beginning of the 21st century, several trends in the evolution of libraries had emerged-collaboration was a key to survival; technology would play an integral role; library as “place” would supersede a warehouse function; and digitization would prevail.

In this article I want to explore two experiments that represent the perfect interweaving of these trends-HathiTrust (hathitrust.org) and the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA; dp.la). These experiments in shared systems, metadata, and digitized content represent projects of a grand and grander scale. While there is no guarantee that either of these projects will be around, at least in current manifestation, it is almost certain that within 15 years their models will provide guidance for any large-scale library ventures of the future.”

“Dean of Libraries Paul Courant tossed an academic journal on a table in his office. The earwax-colored front cover read: The National Tax Journal, March 1980. “Read that for as long as you can before you get bored,” Courant, a silver-haired man with a tiny earring in his left ear said, smiling. Like most writing published in the past 100 years, the journal was printed on acid paper, which quickly deteriorates. Its pages are already yellow around the edges. Courant said these pages will have the consistency of corn flakes in 50 years. The knowledge it holds, too, could evaporate like soggy cereal — and so could countless other tomes.

And that’s just one problem HathiTrust tries to eliminate. The HathiTrust Digital Library, a four-year-old initiative led by the University and involving over 60 other research libraries, seeks to digitize the record of human knowledge.”